Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy [the dot read aloud .TXT] 📗

or to expect to work 167:24 equally with Spirit and matter, Truth and error. There,

is but one way - namely, God and His idea - which

leads to spiritual being. The scientific government of the 167:27 body must be attained through the divine Mind. It is impossible to gain control over the body in any other way.

On this fundamental point, timid conservatism is abso-167:30 lutely inadmissible. Only through radical reliance on

Truth can scientific healing power be realized.

 

Substituting good words for a good life, fair seeming 168:1 for straightforward character, is a poor shift for the weak

and worldly, who think the standard of Christian Science 168:3 too high for them.

 

Belief on the wrong side

 

If the scales are evenly adjusted, the removal of a single

weight from either scale gives preponderance to the oppo-168:6 site. Whatever influence you cast on the side

of matter, you take away from Mind, which

would otherwise outweigh all else. Your belief militates 168:9 against your health, when it ought to be enlisted on the

side of health. When sick (according to belief) you rush

after drugs, search out the material so-called laws of 168:12 health, and depend upon them to heal you, though you

have already brought yourself into the slough of disease

through just this false belief.

 

The divine authority

168:15 Because man-made systems insist that man becomes

sick and useless, suffers and dies, all in consonance with

the laws of God, are we to believe it? Are 168:18 we to believe an authority which denies God’s

spiritual command relating to perfection, - an authority

which Jesus proved to be false? He did the will of the 168:21 Father. He healed sickness in defiance of what is called

material law, but in accordance with God’s law, the law

of Mind.

 

Disease foreseen

168:24 I have discerned disease in the human mind, and recognized the patient’s fear of it, months before the so-called

disease made its appearance in the body. Dis-168:27 ease being a belief, a latent illusion of mortal

mind, the sensation would not appear if the error of belief

was met and destroyed by truth.

 

Changed mentality

168:30 Here let a word be noticed which will be

better understood hereafter, - chemicalization.

By chemicalization I mean the process which mortal 169:1 mind and body undergo in the change of belief from a

material to a spiritual basis.

 

Scientific foresight

169:3 Whenever an aggravation of symptoms has occurred

through mental chemicalization, I have seen the mental

signs, assuring me that danger was over, before 169:6 the patient felt the change; and I have said

to the patient, “You are healed,” - sometimes to his dis—

comfiture, when he was incredulous. But it always came 169:9 about as I had foretold.

 

I name these facts to show that disease has a mental,

mortal origin, - that faith in rules of health or in drugs 169:12 begets and fosters disease by attracting the mind to the

subject of sickness, by exciting fear of disease, and by dos—

ing the body in order to avoid it. The faith reposed in 169:15 these things should find stronger supports and a higher

home. If we understood the control of Mind over body,

we should put no faith in material means.

 

Mind the only healer

169:18 Science not only reveals the origin of all disease as

mental, but it also declares that all disease is cured by

divine Mind. There can be no healing ex-169:21 cept by this Mind, however much we trust

a drug or any other means towards which human faith

or endeavor is directed. It is mortal mind, not mat-169:24 ter, which brings to the sick whatever good they may

seem to receive from materiality. But the sick are never

really healed except by means of the divine power. 169:27 Only the action of Truth, Life, and Love can give

harmony.

 

Modes of matter

 

Whatever teaches man to have other laws and to 169:30 acknowledge other powers than the divine

Mind, is anti-Christian. The good that a

poisonous drug seems to do is evil, for it robs man of 170:1 reliance on God, omnipotent Mind, and according to belief, poisons the human system. Truth is not the basis of 170:3 theogony. Modes of matter form neither a moral nor a

spiritual system. The discord which calls for material

methods is the result of the exercise of faith in material 170:6 modes, - faith in matter instead of in Spirit.

 

Physiology unscientific

 

Did Jesus understand the economy of man less than

Graham or Cutter? Christian ideas certainly present 170:9 what human theories exclude - the Principle

of man’s harmony. The text, “Whosoever

liveth and believeth in me shall never die,” not only con-170:12 tradicts human systems, but points to the self-sustaining

and eternal Truth.

 

The demands of Truth are spiritual, and reach the 170:15 body through Mind. The best interpreter of man’s needs

said: “Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat,

or what ye shall drink.”

170:18 If there are material laws which prevent disease, what

then causes it? Not divine law, for Jesus healed the

sick and cast out error, always in opposition, never in 170:21 obedience, to physics.

 

Causation considered

 

Spiritual causation is the one question to be considered,

for more than all others spiritual causation relates to 170:24 human progress. The age seems ready to

approach this subject, to ponder somewhat

the supremacy of Spirit, and at least to touch the hem 170:27 of Truth’s garment.

 

The description of man as purely physical, or as both

material and spiritual, - but in either case dependent 170:30 upon his physical organization, - is the Pandora box,

from which all ills have gone forth, especially despair.

Matter, which takes divine power into its own hands and 171:1 claims to be a creator, is a fiction, in which paganism and

lust are so sanctioned by society that mankind has caught 171:3 their moral contagion.

 

Paradise regained

 

Through discernment of the spiritual opposite of materiality, even the way through Christ, Truth, man will 171:6 reopen with the key of divine Science the gates

of Paradise which human beliefs have closed,

and will find himself unfallen, upright, pure, and free, 171:9 not needing to consult almanacs for the probabilities either

of his life or of the weather, not needing to study brain—

ology to learn how much of a man he is.

 

A closed question

171:12 Mind’s control over the universe, including man, is

no longer an open question, but is demonstrable Science.

Jesus illustrated the divine Principle and the 171:15 power of immortal Mind by healing sickness

and sin and destroying the foundations of death.

 

Matter versus Spirit

 

Mistaking his origin and nature, man believes himself to 171:18 be combined matter and Spirit. He believes that Spirit

is sifted through matter, carried on a nerve, exposed to ejection by the operation of matter. 171:21 The intellectual, the moral, the spiritual, - yea, the image

of infinite Mind, - subject to non-intelligence!

 

No more sympathy exists between the flesh and Spirit 171:24 than between Belial and Christ.

 

The so-called laws of matter are nothing but false beliefs that intelligence and life are present where Mind 171:27 is not. These false beliefs are the procuring cause of all

sin and disease. The opposite truth, that intelligence and

life are spiritual, never material, destroys sin, sickness, 171:30 and death.

 

The fundamental error lies in the supposition that man

is a material outgrowth and that the cognizance of good 172:1 or evil, which he has through the bodily senses, constitutes his happiness or misery.

 

Godless Evolution

172:3 Theorizing about man’s development from mushrooms

to monkeys and from monkeys into men

amounts to nothing in the right direction and 172:6 very much in the wrong.

 

Materialism grades the human species as rising from

matter upward. How then is the material species main-172:9 tained, if man passes through what we call death and

death is the Rubicon of spirituality? Spirit can form

no real link in this supposed chain of material being. 172:12 But divine Science reveals the eternal chain of existence

as uninterrupted and wholly spiritual; yet this can be

realized only as the false sense of being disappears.

 

Degrees of development

172:15 If man was first a material being, he must have passed

through all the forms of matter in order to become man.

If the material body is man, he is a portion of 172:18 matter, or dust. On the contrary, man is the

image and likeness of Spirit; and the belief that there is

Soul in sense or Life in matter obtains in mortals, alias 172:21 mortal mind, to which the apostle refers when he says

that we must “put off the old man.”

 

Identity not lost

 

What is man? Brain, heart, blood, bones, etc., the 172:24 material structure? If the real man is in the material

body, you take away a portion of the man when

you amputate a limb; the surgeon destroys 172:27 manhood, and worms annihilate it. But the loss of a limb

or injury to a tissue is sometimes the quickener of manli—

ness; and the unfortunate cripple may present more no-172:30 bility than the statuesque athlete, - teaching us by his

very deprivations, that “a man’s a man, for a’ that.”

 

When man is man

 

When we admit that matter (heart, blood, brain, acting 173:1 through the five physical senses) constitutes man, we fail

to see how anatomy can distinguish between 173:3 humanity and the brute, or determine when

man is really man and has progressed farther than his

animal progenitors.

 

Individualization

173:6 When the supposition, that Spirit is within what it

creates and the potter is subject to the clay,

is individualized, Truth is reduced to the level 173:9 of error, and the sensible is required to be made manifest

through the insensible.

 

What is termed matter manifests nothing but a material 173:12 mentality. Neither the substance nor the manifestation

of Spirit is obtainable through matter. Spirit is positive.

Matter is Spirit’s contrary, the absence of Spirit. For 173:15 positive Spirit to pass through a negative condition

would be Spirit’s destruction.

 

Man not structural

 

Anatomy declares man to be structural. Physiology 173:18 continues this explanation, measuring human

strength by bones and sinews, and human life

by material law. Man is spiritual, individual, and eter-173:21 nal; material structure is mortal.

Phrenology makes man knavish or honest according to

the development of the cranium; but anatomy, physiology, 173:24 phrenology, do not define the image of God, the real immortal man.

 

Human reason and religion come slowly to the recogni-173:27 tion of spiritual facts, and so continue to call upon

matter to remove the error which the human mind alone

has created.

173:30 The idols of civilization are far more fatal to health

and longevity than are the idols of barbarism. The idols

of civilization call into action less faith than Buddhism 174:1 in a supreme governing intelligence. The Esquimaux

restore health by incantations as consciously as do civi-174:3 lized practitioners by their more studied methods.

 

Is civilization only a higher form of idolatry, that

man should bow down to a flesh-brush, to flannels, to 174:6 baths, diet, exercise, and air? Nothing save divine

power is capable of doing so much for man as he can

do for himself.

 

Rise of thought

174:9 The footsteps of thought, rising above material standpoints, are slow, and portend a long night to the traveller;

but the angels of His presence - the spiritual 174:12 intuitions that tell us when “the night is far

spent, the day is at hand” - are our guardians in the

gloom. Whoever opens the way in Christian Science is 174:15 a pilgrim and stranger,